Facebook’s Sweet New Office Space

So by now, most of us have been on Facebook, and some of us frequent our pages more often than we blink. It might not even be a stretch to say that most of you, as students of Interior Design, would love to redesign a new office for a particularly social, fun, interactive and collaborative group that feeds our social hunger like the social giant that is Facebook.

Studio o+a was the lucky design firm that got the bid for designing the new 150,000-square-foot office at Palo Alto, California and the photo tour is incredible.

Interestingly enough, some of the walls actually were left stark white, almost as if they still need some work. Apparently, this was no mishap. According to Facebook employee Everett Katigbak’s blog, this has been done on purpose:

“Just as people make the space on the website their own, we’ve opted to do the same with our physical space. We’ve left a lot of the walls white and the spaces unfinished to encourage employees to add the finishing touches.”

A 1960’s industrial style building was chosen for the project, and on each of the two floors, the plan is deliberately open. So open in fact that everyone from the CEO to the Administrative Assistants all work in 30-in. by 60-in. spaces.

The only enclosed spaces in the entire office are the conference rooms. This kind of arrangement encourages interaction, collaboration and idea generation across all departments regardless if you have been at the company for five years or five days.

Employees are actually encouraged to write on the walls of the office, much like writing on a Facebook friends wall or being able to customize your Facebook profile.